How Does Your Garden Grow?
by Expecting Rain
Summary: Quote: "She didn’t think - well, she did, but she didn’t really believe - that the feelings she didn’t want to feel wouldn’t go away. That they would keep growing back like so many weeds." Not a oneshot anymore, but a story told from three sides.
1. Mary

**A/N:** I haven't written any fanfiction in a while, but I'm on winter break now and have time on my hands, so I've been reading and attempting to write. This story was written on a whim in a very short amount of time and has been in existence for less than an hour. This oneshot is the most angsty story I've written (read: very angsty) and doesn't always follow the rules of grammar. I also wanted to clarify that this is NOT in the same universe as "Forever And Ever And Ever" and "A Good Year For the Roses." And to tell you that I don't own _T__he Secret Garden_ and, of course, to ask you to review.

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**How Does Your Garden Grow?**

She had thought that she could do it. That she could be strong enough, stubborn enough to control her stupid, senseless feelings because nothing could ever come of them. Because the scandal of Lady Richards and her groundkeeper had spread even to Misselthwaite, and because she just couldn't bear that kind of attention, of judgment. Because if she did what she wanted to the consequences would spread beyond herself and damage both their families. Because she didn't want anyone to get hurt.

Sometimes she thinks that Colin guesses. He asked her if she'd like to walk around the gardens, once, and she refused so vehemently that he never asked again. Sometimes she thinks she catches him looking at her when she's staring out the window at the rain falling on the moor, but when she glances back at him he's always bent over his biology textbook.

He's never said anything, but from the way he looks at her sometimes (his grey eyes still can't hide what he's feeling) she knows that he knows. He's never said anything, and she knows he won't. Sometimes she feels horribly about it (more feelings she has to prune) but she had to do it. She didn't think (well, she did, but she didn't really believe) that the feelings she didn't want to feel wouldn't go away. That they would keep growing back like so many weeds.

She never lied. She does love Colin, she loves him with all her heart, but her feelings for him aren't like the other ones. A night in bed with Colin can't rival a kiss from –

she can't think it won't think it won't think about him but it doesn't help. Why why why why why won't these feelings go away, why do the weeds keep coming back. She had always been so good at gardening.

That's why she had to dismiss him. Well, why she had to ask Colin to dismiss him, because she hasn't seen him, couldn't bear to see him, since that day in the garden in the rain when she showed him the diamond on her finger and he called her a coward and she was angry because didn't he understand that what she was doing was the bravest thing she had ever done?

It's not like she's not being fair. She wrote him a good recommendation and found him a new situation twenty miles from Misselthwaite. With any luck she will never see him again. She can withstand the hard eyes of everyone he knows if she can just get rid of the feelings.

He leaves, but it doesn't matter. The weeds keep coming back. She locks the door and throws away the key but the weeds keep coming back.


	2. Colin

_**A/N:**__ I know I said "How Does Your Garden Grow?" was a oneshot. And I meant it to be. But I'm on a sort of writing binge now, and I guess I lied. There will be one more chapter after this, and then I'm done. Really._

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He had thought that he could do it. He had thought that if he could show her just how much he adored her, it would be enough. That his love could be enough. That it would. That once she understood just how deeply he loved her, she would finally reciprocate.

He was wrong.

He had known that she loved Dickon, would have been blind not to realize it – but he had thought it was a silly crush, left over from the idolization of their childhood, from her little-girl conviction that Dickon was some sort of angel, with the power to charm animals and call Magic out of the air. She had almost worshipped him. (So had Colin. What child could meet Dickon and not idolize him? Dickon, with his easy smile and his funny accent and his animals that, with his encouragement, would climb into your lap and just for a second you would feel that you too were some sort of sainted moor angel. )

But he hadn't imagined that she could ever truly love an angel. Love was passion, love was fire, love was rough embraces and ardent desire. She and Dickon never had that. They had beatific smiles over daffodils, dirt-covered fingers brushing over a weed, fascination over robins and a missel thrush. What they had was an easy-flowing, ambling stream, neither forceful nor deep. And he had thought that he would be able to dry it up.

For Colin and she had had passion from the beginning. Their rude abruptness at their first meeting, their screaming match over Colin's worries about a lump in his back. They had shouted and screamed their way through childhood, until they were thirteen and Colin went off to school and only came home for two weeks in the summer.

There was boarding school, then there was university, then he was out and back to Misselthwaite, and then they were twenty-two and she was still unmarried, still uncourted, and of course he had connected that with her frequent trips to the garden, but he had thought that it was only a crush, only a crush.

And she spent time with him when he asked her to, and when he kissed her she didn't object, and when he knelt in the room with the ivory elephants, she had said yes and let him put the ring on her finger and had even smiled and kissed him, had even said how happy they were going to be.

He had been so surprised, so overjoyed, that he never thought that she didn't mean it.

She had never been as passionate as he, but he thought that was just what she'd become, a proper society lady, someone accomplished and sophisticated. He missed the angry, screaming girl of his childhood, but he was so glad that she would have him that he didn't stop to ask himself where that fiery girl had gone.

And then they were at the altar, and before she said "I do" she took one glance at the back of the church, at Dickon standing there, hat in hand, looking out of place in his best clothes and too-long hair. And then he had known, and then it had been too late, because she had said it and he had said it first, and they were man and wife and she was kissing him and all he was thinking was _what have I done, what have we done._

And then they were married. The requisite consummation that was an embarrassment for both of them, the passionless nights they spend together when she begins to think he doubts her, when he begins to want a child, two, three, running and shouting to fill the empty house. She submits, and that is all he can say about that.

She does not love him. Or rather, she does not want him. He is a nuisance, a burden to be borne. He tries to tell her, in quiet, awkward ways, that he wants her to be happy, that whatever it means he wants her to be happy. He mentions Lady Richards and how as long as one was discrete who cared what one did with the servants, as long as it was consensual. He talks about a boy from university whose marriage was annulled.

She does nothing. She stops going to the garden, stays inside and sews and stares out the window at the lonely moor. He tries to get her to go out, to see the garden again, because in some faint corner of his mind he still believes in its Magic. It made him walk, it should be able to make her love him.

But she refuses flatly, and that is the end of that.

One time he mentions Dickon in a discussion about the servants, how isn't it strange they haven't seen him in so long when they all used to be so close when they were young? She asks him to dismiss Dickon, does not give a reason, does not attempt to explain. She does not care that Colin knows, and that is what hurts the most.

Dickon takes it calmly and kindly, of course. He reminds Colin to take care of her, and plucks one last rose from their garden. _Their_ garden. Not Colin's. Colin stands there for a long time, staring at the broken branch on that ominous tree, wondering if it would hold his weight, wondering if he borrowed rope from the gardener's shed, how long would it be before anybody found him?

In the end he goes back to the house. She is there, and despite the deadness of her eyes and her now-lusterless hair, he cannot help but hope that somehow, someday she will be herself again.

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Review please!


	3. Dickon

He had thought that they could do it. That they could beat the odds, beat the system, win for themselves a little happiness in a small cottage on the moor with a bit of a garden in the back. He had known that she was scared, that she felt frightened and out of place away from the grand halls of Misselthwaite Manor or the elegant society parlors of London, but he had thought that in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter.

It's arrogant, but sometimes the thought sneaks its way into his head: He had thought that she loved him enough to give all that up, to give up her pretty dresses and her smooth white hands and the flirtatious smiles of eligible young men, all for the sake of a falling-apart cottage on a gloomy moor miles away from anyone else.

Sometimes he wishes that she had managed to love him just a little bit more, but he has to take the thought back because he knows that she loves him more than she loves anybody else.

Poor Colin.

It hurts Dickon's heart to see the two of them, Colin following her like a kicked puppy, knowing that she's hurting him deliberately but loving her despite that, wanting only to please her.

To tell the truth, he doesn't know how it all started, her and Colin. He never felt the ghost of other fingers on her hands, never tasted the other lips that he now knows touched hers.

He didn't know until one night she didn't meet him in the garden and then the next day she did, but she wasn't herself. She wasn't wearing her gardening clothes and in the place of a spade she had a diamond on her hand. She had burst into tears without him even asking and said that she had to, that they couldn't do it, that it was impossible. He had called her silly, called her a fool, called her a coward, even, and she didn't change her mind. One last kiss, slick with rainwater and tears, and she was gone, running away, her wet braid hitting her back like a rope.

He went to the wedding. He knew that he shouldn't, but he couldn't keep away. He swears that she looked at him the moment before she said her vows, and he hates himself for it. He has stolen any possibility of happiness she might have had with Colin.

A few months after the wedding, Colin comes to the garden while he is pruning the roses and tells him, voice breaking, that he wants her to be happy, that he will do whatever it takes, and if Dickon is what it takes for her to be happy, then so be it.

In that moment, Dickon realizes that Colin's love is something real, not the childhood crush or the possessive want he had always thought it was. He knows he should hate her for what she has done to the both of them, but he finds that he can't.

Despite Colin's promise, she never comes to him. Instead, a year later, Colin comes again, tells him that he's being let go, hands him a pay envelope thicker than it should be, and Dickon shakes the proffered hand, trying to tell him with the strength of his grip that he never had any ill will toward Colin.

He tells him to take care of her – that he cannot help – and plucks a rose to take with him, as a reminder that that kind of beauty is never without thorns.

He should have loved a daisy instead.


End file.
